StoryCorps Hurricane Katrina: Taylor

From: StoryCorps
Series: StoryCorps
Length: :54

John W. Taylor, Jr. talks about how New Orleans has changed since Hurricane Katrina. Read the full description.

Piece Audio

Playing: StoryCorps Hurricane Katrina: Taylor
From: StoryCorps

Taylor_small John Taylor was born in New Orleans' Charity Hospital and raised in the Lower Ninth Ward. One of his sisters died at the hospital during Hurricane Katrina because of a power failure. The storm also destroyed his childhood home, including the only things Taylor, a dockworker, says he really wanted from there: photos of himself when he was younger.

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Piece Description

John Taylor was born in New Orleans' Charity Hospital and raised in the Lower Ninth Ward. One of his sisters died at the hospital during Hurricane Katrina because of a power failure. The storm also destroyed his childhood home, including the only things Taylor, a dockworker, says he really wanted from there: photos of himself when he was younger.

Transcript

It wasn't that bad until I actually slept a week in my truck in my
backyard, no people, sounds of rats running everywhere, just looked like
chemical warfare. Before it happened, you walked around the corner to
the drug store, you walked to the neighborhood store and the
neighborhood wino ask you for a quarter, like he ask you everyday, you
don't think those sort of things are important, until they're not there.
I'm trying to decide whether I stay in New Orleans, or leave New
Orleans. I mean I've lived all of the United States and came back here.
This was the Home Port, as we called it, now, no more home. And a lot of
people are not coming back because they don't want to feel this way
again, you know it's just, it's too hard to see it this way. I don't
know if it's that I feel everything I love is gone, or what, I'm just
not happy here anymore.
Read the full transcript